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The ultimate parallel computer is a quantum computer. Quantum computing pioneer David Deutsch controversially argues that “quantum computers share information with huge numbers of versions of themselves throughout the multiverse,” and can get answers faster here in our Universe by in a sense getting help from these other versions.4 We don’t yet know whether a commercially competitive quantum computer can be built during the coming decades, because it depends both on whether quantum physics works as we think it does and on our ability to overcome daunting technical challenges, but companies and
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This society can itself be viewed as a system that remembers, computes and learns, all at an accelerating pace as one invention enables the next: writing, the printing press, modern science, computers, the internet and so on. What will future historians put next on that list of enabling inventions? My guess is artificial intelligence.
Many debaters argue that reducing income inequality is a good idea not merely in an AI-dominated future, but also today. Although the main argument tends to be a moral one, there’s also evidence that greater equality makes democracy work better: when there’s a large well-educated middle class, the electorate is harder to manipulate, and it’s tougher for small numbers of people or companies to buy undue influence over the government. A better democracy can in turn enable a better-managed economy that’s less corrupt, more efficient and faster growing, ultimately benefiting essentially everyone.
today “Luddite” is usually used as a derogatory epithet implying that someone is a technophobe on the wrong side of history, resisting progress and inevitable change.
The future potential for life in our cosmos is awe-inspiringly grand, so let’s not squander it by drifting like a rudderless ship, clueless about where we want to go!
O’Neill cylinders
This implies that when people ask about the meaning of life as if it were the job of our cosmos to give meaning to our existence, they’re getting it backward: It’s not our Universe giving meaning to conscious beings, but conscious beings giving meaning to our Universe. So the very first goal on our wish list for the future should be retaining (and hopefully expanding) biological and/or artificial consciousness in our cosmos, rather than driving it extinct.
The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
The Asilomar AI Principles
